Cairo, Camels, and the Pyramids
/I’ve been to Egypt once before, in 2013 with my friend Chris Simpson, and absolutely loved it. Seeing the pyramids at Giza and the Valley of the Kings near Luxor is an unforgettable experience. Unfortunately, on that trip we didn’t get to visit Abu Simbel, so Chuck and I decided to visit Egypt on our travels so I could check that off my list, and so he could see Egypt for the first time. We’ll also be diving in the Red Sea, which is some of the best diving in the entire world.
The Egyptian pound has tanked since I was last here. Right now, it’s about 17.64 pounds to the dollar. People seem worse off than my last visit, but I can’t tell if that’s just my perception or the reality. One welcome addition is the fact that Uber is available in Cairo and Alexandria, meaning that we don’t have to deal with negotiating taxi prices (which are always outrageous since we’re so obviously tourists) or struggle to communicate where we are going. This is a big step up from renting a car, since Egypt’s driving appears to be a lawless swamp of cars honking and squeezing into tight places. There are no traffic lanes or rules, just swerving and smashing into things. We witnessed a fist fight over a car accident in the first hour of arrival, and we’ve been passengers in a fender bender already, just one week in.
Our first stop in Cairo was The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, frequently called just “Egyptian Museum.” It houses over 120,000 artifacts, including The Gold Mask of Tutankhamun, composed of 11 KG of solid gold. We saw all kinds of scarabs, busts, masks and figurines—and plenty of mummies. There are two rooms with royal mummies in various states of preservation. There are so many different treasures piled in every corner, it was hard for my Type-A brain to chill out. I wanted to label everything, organize it into a sensible order, clean it all up, and show it off! Chuck and I kept talking about how even a modest endowment to the museum would go so far. It's an amazing museum, but could be so much more impressive if done correctly.
The next day we visited the famous pyramids! Our hotel helped us book a tour to visit a woman named Madame Hada, who gave us some historical information on the Giza Pyramid complex. After that, we were taken to the stables to meet up with our guide and hop on some camels to trek across the desert to the pyramids. We circled the complex and marveled at the enormity of the ancient pyramids. We ended the tour with a stop at the Sphynx. See pictures below, including the many dorky touristy photos our guide forced us to take.
The tour wasn’t quite as good as the last time I visited, and afterwards they took us into a back room and tried to sell us perfumes and oils, glaring and angry when we said no. It was a great experience overall, but again that Type-A brain just kept thinking, “If only their government would get their sh*t together, they could make so much more money, and so many more people would come to see this amazing place!” It's a good reminder of how lucky we are to have the democracy and government that we have, as flawed as it sometimes seems to be.
After the Giza pyramids, we visited the Saqqara step pyramids, which pre-date the Giza pyramids and are much less busy with tourists. Again, we had to fend off vendors and men straight up lying to us, telling us that we needed a tour guide to see this thing or that, or trying to charge us to take photos. Even with the hassle, it was very cool to see the hieroglyphs and the temples. We even saw a depiction of a hippo giving birth! Crazy.
We had a very nice dinner in Cairo as well, but other than that decided to spend little time in this busy, polluted city to head to Alexandria in the north part of Egypt, which is Lower Egypt.
Click to enlarge and scroll left or right!
